I stand among violated crypts.

The noble dead are missing, their resting places torn open with methodical purpose.

No random act of robbery, something sought these specific remains.

Commander Ikert's mission to find dwarven gates pulls at these bones. Yet something else compels the compulsion, a deeper wrongness in the foundations of Haven.

These tunnels hold secrets beyond access to underground roads.

I trace clawmarks on a broken crypt lid. Whatever took these remains possessed strength enough to tear bronze and marble.

Intelligence enough to select specific tombs.

Purpose enough to leave others untouched.

My borrowed bones know duty. Haven's walls above need protection. These empty crypts house a threat that will one day threaten those walls.

These demand attention.

The tunnels await. Secrets lie in the deep.

I move through passages that stretch beyond logic, moving down paths that should not reach so far as this bones go ever downward.

My bones remember other halls, but nothing like this labyrinth beneath Haven's street where they buried the dead.

I move through passages that stretch beyond Haven's foundations. Noble vaults line these corridors, their bronze doors hang twisted from massive hinges. Each vault tells the same story, empty caskets, violated remains.

My hand traces the edge of a broken seal. Whatever force moved through here showed precise intent. Gold and jewels remain untouched in their settings. Ceremonial weapons rust on their plaques.

Only the bones are missing.

A golden ring circles empty air where noble fingers once rested, surrounded by centuries of settled dust. The magic in rings worn on those hands did not interest whatever stalked these halls.

The current that drives these borrowed bones pulses weaker here.

No matter. Purpose needs no warmth to persist.

My borrowed bones recognize a presence in these halls. Not the simple dead, they follow known patterns, rising and falling by rules this frame remembers. This is something else.

Something that hungers specifically for bone.

I pause at another violated vault. The bronze door lies crumpled like paper, its wards shattered.

Inside, more empty caskets.

More untouched wealth.

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More missing bones.

The arch before me towers twice my height, carved with letters my borrowed memories cannot read. The letters carved across the stone, a message of rest for those entombed in stone.

The magic in those words still holds power.

I feel it touch against what animates these bones.

A warning, perhaps. Or a plea.

Torches line long with scorch mark scars along the walls. Their metal loops are warped and bent, as though something pried them loose for no reason but destruction.

There is malice.

Then new chambers sprawl before me.

Ornate reliefs line the walls, warriors and guardians carved in vigil. Most stand headless now, their stone faces torn away.

Deep gouges mark their surfaces, as if massive teeth tested their substance.

The coffins tell similar tales.

Bronze and marble lids wrenched aside with brutal force. Contents missing. No scattered bones remain, no fragments left behind.

Whatever violated these tombs left nor fragments, nor splinters.

My demon shield crafted from Duke's skull recognizes a kindred darkness here, responding to power that should not exist until deeper depths.

These borrowed pieces know something lurks here.

Something that breaks wards, violates tombs, and takes only bones. My purpose remains clear, protect Haven.

Whatever stalks these halls threatens that purpose.

Suddenly a wide, open chamber unfolds before me, half-collapsed columns at the edges.

A vaulted ceiling overhead.

Broken braziers line either side, bone dust and scattered planks from coffins litter the floor. Eye sockets search the gloom. The stench of rot saturates every corner.

Then I see it.

A hulking silhouette in the chamber’s heart, a mound of bone and flesh, stooped over something half-devoured.

The thing hunches over remains that should rest in peace. Not a single coffin - many, torn apart, reused, repurposed into a grotesque nest.

Shattered planks jut from corroded iron bands, splinters scattered across stone.

A skeleton dangles from its maw, ribcage crushed between teeth that shouldn't exist in any natural mouth. The skull lolls back, jaw hanging slack, arms swaying with each grinding crunch.

The creature turns. Borrowed memories offer no name for what towers before me. Its form defies nature, a mass of fused bone and rotting sinew twice my height. Multiple jaws line its elongated face, each filled with teeth stolen from noble skulls.

The current that drives these bones pulses stronger.

A warning. This thing devours.

But there's more, something my borrowed memories cannot grasp. Teeth sprout in impossible places, arranged in spiraling rows that descend into darkness within its maw.

A nightmare for the living. A thing of stolen parts.

Ribs curve outward through leather hide.

Arms, too many arms, end in hands crafted from countless finger bones, welded together with sinew and cartilage.

Its skin, where visible between bone protrusions, bears the blackened sheen of grave rot. Dark fluids seep from joints where incompatible pieces meet, dripping marrow thick, tar.

I watch the abomination feed.

The creature drops its meal, bones clattering across stone.

Empty eye sockets fix upon my frame.

I shift into a defensive stance. This is what's been violating Haven's crypts.

The thing hunches over its grisly feast, unaware or uncaring of my presence. Another bone crunches. Then it rises.

It matters not.

These bones have faced horrors before. The Harvester with its stolen face, while it hunted in tunnels beneath Joist. Its chitinous segments clicked against stone as scythe-limbs sought prey. Or Demon Duke whose skull now knows service.

Balverines wore human faces too, whose bones still speak of the hunter.

The corrupted gargoyle above Haven's walls thought height would grant it victory. Stone wings shattered these bones across the field, yet each piece fought on until its stone crumbled.

A skeletal wyrm's bones now reinforce my frame, after Candlekeep.

Its death granted protection against tooth and claw.

Each victory has changed this form. Each battle leaves its mark.

Yet this abomination before me represents something new. A creature of bones stolen, not borrowed or chosen.

We lock gazes, my hollow sockets meeting its dead eye stare. Its frame is a crawling madness of fused limbs and devoured sinew, snatched from tombs. A grave-rot creature made of stolen remains and insatiable hunger that seeks other harvests.

A moment’s hush. Then it surges.